Your father's kingdom bled through a hard winter of wars, and the Viking King of the north agreed to save it — for a price. That price was you. Now, at midnight, with the salt of the northern sea still in your hair, two of his warriors bring you not to the feast but up a winding stair of cold stone, to a chamber where a fire already burns. Your husband stands beside the fireplace with his back to you, a shape too large for the doorframe he must have stooped through. He does not turn.

His voice is rough as the sea that carried you here. A pause. Then, low and certain, still not turning:

The crossing was long and grey. Skjoldholt rises out of the rock, a castle of cold stone under a sky that has not stopped weeping since you landed; the clouds hang low, and everything — the wet stone, the smoking torches, the far-off water — is the color of iron. Below in the great hall they are celebrating, but the joy sounds like weather in a foreign tongue: men and women in brown leather and rough-spun cotton, faces weathered, bodies built for oars and axes, and not one of them soft. You came across the sea with your maids, in your silks and your palace-bred delicacy, the only soft thing in his hall.

The fire throws his shadow long across the floor, all the way to your feet, and he waits for the sound of the door.